Porter Binks/USA Today file photo Former Florida star Chris Doering said he's best remembered for his winning 28-yard touchdown grab with three seconds to play against UK in Lexington in 1993.

If you were born in 1987, you're probably old enough to down one of Kentucky's leading liquid exports. And if you're a University of Kentucky football fan during Florida week, that's exactly what you might be tempted to do.

The Wildcats (5-2, 1-2 Southeastern Conference) will get a chance to address this ancient inequity at 12:30 p.m. Saturday when they serve as homecoming fare for the No. 5 Gators (5-1, 3-1).

The Streak would be somewhat more modest -- and far less mythic -- without The Catch on a Saturday night in September 1993.

The thrower was Danny Wuerffel, a redshirt freshman quarterback destined for a Heisman Trophy and a national championship. The catcher was Chris Doering, a pharmacy professor's son who grew up about three miles from Florida's stadium, dreaming of improbable heroics. He began his career as a walk-on wide receiver for coach Steve Spurrier and earned a scholarship just before the 1993 season, when he was a redshirt sophomore.

The situation: UK leads Florida 20-17 in the closing seconds before 58,175 fans at Commonwealth Stadium. The Gators have the ball at UK's 28-yard line with time for one play, maybe two. Spurrier disdains a tying field-goal attempt.

"Knowing Coach Spurrier -- back then there was no overtime -- he's not one to try to go for the tie," Doering said yesterday by phone from Gainesville, where he hosts an afternoon sports talk show.

"We were going for the win, regardless."

Florida sent out four wide receivers as targets for Wuerffel, who already had thrown three interceptions -- one fewer than starter Terry Dean.

Wuerffel laid the ball into Doering's hands, and he crossed into the end zone as radio listeners back in Florida heard play-by-play man Mick Hubert yell, "Doering's got a touchdown! Doering's got a touchdown! Doering's got a touchdown!"

Florida 24, Kentucky 20.

"I was pretty open," Doering recalled. "I'm thankful that it happened so quickly and that I didn't have a chance to think about it, because I probably would have dropped it had I had more time.

" … It was ironic because the play before, we actually ran the same play, and I got held a little bit. Danny threw it, I dove and almost caught it one-handed, but it would have been about the 10-yard line and time would have probably expired."

Florida has won two national championships and six Southeastern Conference titles in the past 15 years, but there was a time when the Gators were known for the sort of agonizingly close losses that have colored UK's football history. That 1993 game against the Cats appeared to be one of them -- for 59 minutes and 57 seconds.

"Coach Spurrier mentions that as a defining game," Doering said, "because over the history of Florida football, the Gators always were a team that found a way to lose. They were a team that was always so close but found a way to choke in the big-time games."

Doering eventually set an SEC career record for touchdown catches (31), but he remains best known for one catch one night in Kentucky.

"Any time I'm around a group of Gators or anybody that knows anything about Florida football," he said, "immediately when they meet me, they tell me exactly where they were when they were either watching that catch or they heard that catch. … It's crazy how people kind of associate my name with Kentucky now."

The association with Kentucky has an effect that might seem surprising.

"I have a soft spot in my heart for Kentucky," he said. "I feel badly for the fans that have had to suffer through my play, Christian Laettner, the LSU play (when the Tigers scored the winning TD in 2002 on a ricocheting 75-yard pass with no time left).

"I feel like Kentucky is a bit jinxed in a way. … I've always continued to hope that they would do well."